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Art of the Week March 11, 2012: Keith Haring
(1958-1990)produced hundreds of public drawings in rapid rhythmic lines,
sometimes creating as many as forty “subway drawings” in one day. This seamless flow of images became familiar
to New York commuters, who often would stop to engage the artist when they encountered him at work. The subway became, as
Haring said, a “laboratory” for working out his ideas and experimenting with his simple lines. In the popular media, Haring developed watch designs for Swatch and an advertising campaign for
Absolut vodka.
Art of the Week March 4, 2012: Amrita
Sher-Gill (1913-1941) was born in Budapest in 1913 to a Hungarian mother and a Sikh father. Her early childhood was
spent mostly in Hungary, and in 1921 the family moved to India, where she began her schooling. Amrita's early work often reflected
the academic style in which she was trained. However, she also began to experiment with ways of representing the non-Western
human images. Today, she is considered an important woman painter of 20th century India, whose legacy stands at par with that
of the Masters of Bengal Renaissance.
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Art
of the Week Feb. 26, 2012: "View of Toledo" by El Greco (1541-1614). Born Doménikos Theotokópoulos,
El Greco (as we know him now) was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. View of Toledo, is one of
the two surviving landscapes painted by El Greco. The other, called View and Plan of Toledo, lies at Museo Del Greco,Toledo,
Spain. Along with Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night, landscapes by William Turner, and works by Monet, it is among the best
known depictions of the sky in Western art. .
Art of the Week: "George Washington" by Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) was declared the "Father
of American Portraiture" because he portrayed most of the notable men and women of the Federal period in the United States.
Born in Rhode Island, the artist trained and worked in London, England, and Dublin, Ireland, from 1775 to 1793. He then returned
to America with the specific intention of painting President Washington's portrait.
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Art of the Week, August 28, 2011:
"Humanscapes" by Fernando Ferreira de Araujo, a Brazilian artist also based in New York City. His
paintings are strongly identified by a “bleeding” hallmark with multiple layers of paint along with deep
brush strokes. Ferreira de Araujo had a solo art show, Humanscapes, at the Brazilian Post Office Cultural Center in October-November
2010. The works displayed in the show find the human figure as a starting point. .
Art of the
Week August 21, 2011: "Travelers Amidst Mountains and Streams" by Chinese Artist Fan Kuan. Fan Kuan (990–1020) was a
Chinese landscape painter of the Song Dynasty. He is considered among the great masters of China's the 10th and 11th centuries.
Kuan spent his life as a recluse in the rugged Qiantang mountains of Shanxi to base his paintings on the Taoist principle
of becoming one with nature. No biographical details survive about KuanTravelers Amidst Mountains and Streams, a
large hanging scroll, is Kuan's best known work. It became a model for other Chinese artists as a seminal painting of the
Northern Song school. When looking at the painting, the viewer realizes how small he/she is compared to the big picture of
nature.
Art of the Week, August 14, 2011: Graffiti art by English Freehand Artist Banksy,
who Banksy is a pseudonymous England based graffiti artist, political activist, film director and painter. His satirical street
art and subversive epigrams combine irreverent dark humor with graffiti done in a distinctive stencilling technique. Such
artistic works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the
world.
Art
of the Week, August 7, 2011: "Hay Wain" by English Romantic Painter John Constable. ‘The Hay Wain’
is based on a site in Suffolk, near Flatford on the River Stour. The hay wain, a type of horse-drawn cart, stands in the water
in the foreground. Across the meadow in the distance on the right, is a group of haymakers at work.
Art of the Week July 31, 2011:
“La Goulue” by French Poster Artist Toulouse Lautrec. In the lithograph “La Goulue”
(1891), Lautrec adapted the fad for Japanese style (asymmetric composition, flat areas of color) that then pervaded French
art to the also burgeoning art of the picture poster. Among those whose images are now a part of art history are the Moulin
Rouge dancers: Louise Weber (La Goulue) and Jane Avril, and the combative singer/entrepreneur Aristide Bruant.
Art of the Week: July 24, 2011: Prakriti: Indian Contemporary Artist S.H. Raza Raza's paintings
revolve mainly around nature and its various facets. He believes the bindu (dot) to be the center of creation and existence
and his works reflect this particular thinking. In his painting Prakirti, the canvas is composed of twenty-five squares,
contains in each of them an image suggesting the essence of the elements present in nature [i.e., prakriti]. The painting
represents Raza’s ideas of colourful forms, contours, and shapes rising from black obscurity. In a visible energy spectacle,
certain fundamental elements are intricately interrelated and determine the nature of form.
Art
of the Week July 17, 2011: "Four-sided Pyramid" by American Artist Solomon "Sol" LeWitt, an American
artist considered to be the founder of Conceptual Art and Minimalism. LeWitt’s “Four-sided Pyramid”
was installed in Washington D.C.’s National Gallery of Art sculpture garden in 1999. The terraced pyramid is associated
with the setback design that had long been characteristic of New York City skyscrapers. Its geometric structure also alludes
to the ziggurats of ancient Mesopotamia.
Art
of the Week July 10, 2011: "The Scream" by Edvard Munch. Painted in 1893, this is possibly
the first Expressionist painting. It has been widely interpreted as representing the universal anxiety of modern man. Painted
with broad bands of garish color and highly simplified forms, and employing a high viewpoint, the agonized figure is reduced
to a garbed skull in the throes of an emotional crisis.
Art of the Week July 3, 2011: "Portrait of a Woman" by Rabindranath
Tagore. Tagore was best known as a composer and poet and was the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize for literature.
When already 60 years old, he began to paint and created a body of work that made him one of South Asia's great modern painters.
For Tagore art and aesthetics were not a peripheral; they were an integral part of the self, facilitating the recognition
of beauty in all aspects of life.
Art
of the Week: June 19, 2011: "Relativity by Dutch artist MC Escher. In the lithograph Relativity,
printed in 1953, Escher depicts a world in which the normal laws of gravity do not apply. The architectural structure seems
to be the centre of an idyllic community, with most of its inhabitants casually going about their ordinary business, such
as dining. The structure has six stairways, and each stairway can be used by people who belong to two different gravity
sources.
Art of the Week June 12, 2011: "La Mariee"
by Marc Chagall. In Chagall's work during all stages of his life,
it was his colors which attracted and captured the viewer's attention. As well as the symbolic or the metaphorical, there
is the religious dimension to his hybrid animal-human imagery.
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